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Wednesday, October 10, 2012

2 weeks...

36 weeks

Only two weeks and a matter of hours before Bean's arrival! I have to admit, I didn't think my body would make it this far. I'm still not sure that I'll make it until the 24th, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I'm still having NST's ran twice a week and my appointment back on Oct. 1st went from a 30 minute visit to a 13 hour visit to Labor and Delivery. In the days following up to my test, I'd been having a lot of trouble breathing and was waking up several times a night gasping for air, similar to Sleep Apnea symptoms. I'd mentioned all of this to the NST nurse who grew even more concerned after testing my heart rate several times and every time it ranged 122-134 bpm even after 30 minutes of resting. She also noticed that Bean had become less active compared to previous visits. After completing the test, doing an ultrasound and confirming that Bean was healthy and I still had a good amount of Amniotic fluid, she sent me to Labor and Delivery just as a precaution. We believed my high heart rate and trouble breathing was because Bean was growing, the high amount of amniotic fluid, etc., but she felt like it didn't hurt to double check that there wasn't something more serious that we might be missing.

What a joke it all turned out to be! In 13 hours I went through 2 nurses and 4 doctors who ran an EKG, chest x-ray, chest ultrasound, an ultrasound of the veins in my legs, an arterial blood gas test (ABG), a CT Scan of my heart and a second EKG after they lost the results of the first. One of the doctors, a Cardiologist, was insistent that I had a blood clot causing all of my symptoms and was the mastermind behind running all of the tests. Even though every test was coming back completely normal, he insisted something was wrong and would come up with another test to run. Finally, after 13 hours (and most of those with no food or drink) he agreed, everything was normal and maybe the NST nurse and I were right...Bean was growing fast, maybe too quickly for me, I have a ton of amniotic fluid and maybe, just maybe it was all pushing on my diaphragm and making it hard for me to breathe. So incredibly frustrating! I think we finally made it home around 3:00 a.m.

The following Friday, October 5th, I had a check-up with my OB where we reviewed all of the tests L&D ran, did another ultrasound and when I told him I was still having trouble breathing, he basically told me to suck it up...the 24th is almost here. He said aside from the trouble breathing (which is all to be expected), Bean and I are perfectly healthy and he didn't feel comfortable making any changes when they weren't absolutely necessary. So for now I'm still resting (a lot!), keeping my feet up, visiting NST and my OB on a weekly basis and just waiting for Bean's arrival in about 2 weeks and 2 and a half hours.